


On Our Own Swords

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Doomed Relationship, Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, First Time Blow Jobs, sturm und drang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:50:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4745279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would have been better if Cadash had chosen someone else, or if Blackwall could resist her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Our Own Swords

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for [this prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/11864.html?thread=46422360#t46422360) on the Dragon Age Kink Meme, for Blackwall/Inquisitor blowjobs. :D

Haven is crowded these days. The people of Haven know that they’re already too small, that they’ll never be able to support the Inquisition forever at the rate that it’s growing. Recruits pile on top of pilgrims on top of merchants, tradesmen, and ordinary citizens. The people are proud to be the home, the birthplace of the Inquisition, but it’s hard enough to find a moment along, let alone a seat at the tavern. 

There’s always a seat for the Herald of Andraste, though, whenever she manages to pull herself from the work her advisors demand of her, which isn’t nearly fucking often enough, if you ask Blackwall. In the corner of the tavern, he hears the murmurs, the quiet whisperings that the Inquisition has no Inquisitor, how suiting it would be to name the Herald as the head of it all. It’s attractive, promising to them, and all the more so for as frequently as she rides through the gates of Haven with renewed support from across Thedas, with more supplies, more people, more victories. 

Blackwall can’t blame them for wanting to put their hopes on her shoulders. Some people had questions about Andraste’s chosen—a _dwarf_ , of all things?—but those aren’t as common anymore. The Herald is larger than life itself, has a moment for anyone who needs, and for all that she’s direct, pointed in her questioning when it comes to her official duties as an agent of the Inquisition, she has a casual air about her that puts everyone she meets at ease. 

He sees her a little differently than they do, though. For Blackwall, she’s not the Herald—not anymore, at least. She’s Cadash, the woman who stakes out her own tent in the field, who fearlessly thrusts herself into the center of a fight, drinks around the fire with the rest of them, and sometimes flirts shamelessly with him outside the forge. She is all the things the people think of her, but she’s more than that, too. 

Blackwall knows what Cadash is, of course. He knows what her clan is to the rest of the Carta, and what that suggests about her past. The deep scars on her face, healed over but new enough to mean something, are proof enough that she’s barely a few months removed from the kind of life that would chill the blood of the most hardened sell-sword Blackwall knew from his own past. Maker knows, it curdles his blood to think how Cadash earned scars like hers. 

For a Carta dwarf, though, Cadash is surprisingly straightforward. To hear her tell it, she’d once been someone different whose whole worldview was changed by the Conclave and the Breach, but Blackwall doesn’t believe it. People don’t just change overnight. They fight for it every fucking day, the person they want to be wrestling with the person they were, and Cadash isn’t fighting. It’s more likely that Cadash is the kind of person who’s waited her whole life for the opportunity to be something else; something more like what she’s meant for.

Whispers be damned, Andraste couldn’t have chosen better.

It took him all of three days to realize that Cadash is going to be a problem for him, which was about a day too late for him to decide to avoid the temptation and leave. She’s charming, genuine, sharp as steel, and if not changed, at least more thoughtful for the experience at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, which she insists is as much a mystery to her as anyone else. She is, in short, exactly the sort of woman who couldn’t have caught his eye ten years, even five years ago, and is now every last thing that could endanger his self-imposed vow of solitude.

And, in a stroke of fortune he doesn’t deserve, Cadash spends her free time with him, coming by the forge to watch him work and catch a few words with him, or sitting in the corner of Flissa’s tavern with him whenever she’s in Haven and free to ditch her reports. On nights like tonight, the tavern is full to bursting, raucous singing spilling out into the streets of Haven, in celebration of nothing more than the support and blessing of some obscure noble that Cadash has rescued. Everyone seems to be there, but when Cadash slides onto the rough-hewn bench in Blackwall’s corner, the world contracts around to the point of light around her.

“Quite the turnout tonight,” she says, her eyes on his, even when she drinks deeply from her ale. 

He understands what she means by it. Something familiar coils hotly in Blackwall’s chest, smoldering long after he drags his gaze from hers. She doesn’t even have to try to get a rise from him, to heat his blood and leave him wanting. Cadash has certainly done it before, maybe deliberately, but the thrill of it never tarnishes. 

He clears his throat cautiously. “Could you blame a town for celebrating anything they can in times like this?” 

“No,” Cadash answers thoughtfully, and Blackwall isn’t imagining that she’s moving closer to him now. Her thigh is now against his, her knee knocking against his. “But it’s a little more crowded than I like in here.”

Blackwall is as desperate to deflect her interest to anything else as he is to keep her focused on him. He’s had enough of the tavern’s homebrew to be sharply aware of the vibrant, pulsing connection between them; the unsevered cord drawing him ever closer to her that he is powerless to resist. His head is spinning, casting his eyes across the room in search of someone, anyone who might step in now to demand her attention or intercede on his behalf. It seems like everyone is otherwise occupied, for once focused on someone and something other than their beloved Herald. 

Cadash leans toward him conspiratorially and Blackwall keeps his eyes on the crowds, even as he tips his whole body to respond to her, to lower himself enough that she might easily lean up and whisper into his ear. 

“No one would notice if we left.” Her breath is both warm and soft on his ear, and Blackwall swallows the kind of moan that would most certainly not be missed by the Lady Herald, whose fingers rest on just the inside of his knee under the table, skimming up his thigh. 

She is right, of course, they could slip out through the door just behind them, and no one would notice either of them. He frequently retires so early, and she is so rarely here that they wouldn’t be missed until so much later than anyone could connect the two, he thinks, as if that is any justification for the sort of thing he might allow of himself with the excuse she is offering him. 

“I suppose not,” Blackwall answers lowly, fully intending to renew his interest in his tankard, even as her fingers squeeze around his, and then disappear. 

“The forge,” she suggests heatedly, just loud enough that he might hear. "If you want."

And then she slips off the bench and through the door. No one notices when she’s left. Not yet, at least. 

Blackwall decides almost as soon as the door swings closed behind her that he’s going, and he’s already admonishing himself when he leaves a few coins on the table for the barmaid and hurries out into the frosty mountain air. 

Once he’s past sight of the tavern, the streets of Haven are utterly deserted. It’s no surprise. Anyone who might be awake is in the tavern, and anyone with sense is at home and asleep. Like _he_ ought to be, if he had an ounce of it left to him. 

He’s stepped beyond the makeshift camp for the soldiers and close enough to see the small cabin he’s made his quarters just beyond the forge. Shadows stretch in contrast to the bright white of the snow scattered on the path, but it isn’t until Blackwall is passing the stone walls separating forge from road that he sees Cadash, nearly out of sight in the archway. 

“Blackwall.” Cadash keeps her voice low and enticing, but she doesn’t move toward him at all, seemingly confident that he will be the one to come to her. And she is so inevitably correct about him, because Blackwall sweeps his eyes from her boots to her eyes, drinking in everything irresistible about her. 

The top of her head is barely even with his chest, something he is sensitive to when he talks to her, so he doesn’t seem like he’s looking _down_ on her, but her shoulders are strong, the lines of her arms well-defined, even under all her armor. Her legs are powerful, her arse is firmly rounded, and her breasts are generously proportioned to her body, if also thoroughly distracting. It would be easy to forget she’s powerful, but it would be a mistake and Blackwall can no longer pretend he doesn’t want her, not even to Cadash herself. 

His hand hovers, half extended, before Cadash grabs it and pulls him toward her, very effectively pinning her to the thick wooden support post. Blackwall plants one hand beside her head and rests the other on her waist, exhaling desperately when she pushes her entire body into his. 

She’s trouble, he thinks helplessly, some final burst of regret before he leans forward, bends down and captures her mouth with his. Cadash hums a sound that seems like relief and opens herself to him, her hands scrabbling along his arms, as if she can pull him any closer than he is.

She uses teeth, judiciously nibbling at the edge of his mouth until he yields a moan into her mouth and she gently explores his lips, his teeth, and finally sweeping her tongue along the side of his. Her fingers search before gripping the back of his head. Her mouth tastes like the kind of sour beer that Flissa brews and her skin smells like the soap the villagers in Haven make from crystal grace, and together it leaves Blackwall feeling lightheaded.

“Cadash,” he moans when her mouth slips to the side of his mouth and down toward his neck. He should be stopping this, should be doing anything at all to discourage her, because this _cannot happen._ He knows already that this will end poorly, that it _will_ end for them, before it’s even started. 

Yet his hands move down her back and cup her arse. He wishes he could say this sort of reckless behavior could be blamed on the beer, but he thinks about Cadash like this all the time and she has never been subtle about what it is she wants from him. _With_ him.

His head is spinning, but Cadash is determined, planting one hand on his abdomen and pushing him back, even when Blackwall staggers backward, straightens and stares down at her. He can’t think what she’s doing, what she wants, but then his back lands against the far wall of the forge and she forces him to sit on the bench by the banked embers of the fire pit. He’s grateful for the faint warmth at his back and the miracle of her mouth crashing forcefully against his again. 

Cadash scrambles up into his lap and her knees press against his hips as she straddles him. His hands rest on her arse again, her hips, and slide up her spine. Her eyes flicker down and then back up at his eyes when his fingertips skate the sides of her breasts. Blackwall isn’t used to this; the last time he’d been to bed with a woman, there had been none of this tenderness. Hell, there hadn’t been any tenderness there for the last _ten_. Cadash is somehow different. She’s precious to him now, it’s too important to take risks with her, even though she’s scarred, unbreakable, utterly fearless. He thinks fleetingly that maybe it’s not that other things have changed about the world, but that Blackwall himself has changed.

“Blackwall,” she murmurs against his lips, pressing her breasts to his chest, apparently pleased to find how easily they slot together like this, with the heat of her want pressed indecently against his cock. She kisses him again, hard, and Blackwall reaches for the back of her head, cupping the curve of her neck in his hand, even as he traces the outline of the scar on the top of her mouth with his tongue. Cadash moans, a soft noise in the back of her throat that sends an electric rush right up through his spine, leaving behind a faint tingle. 

Nothing, no one has ever been so perfect as she is right now, at least until Cadash unlaces his trousers and presses the flat of her palm against his cock. Blackwall’s hands are shaking a little, but he settles on on the lowest part of her back, stabilizing her while she’s focused on cupping her hand around him and pushing aside the constriction of his trousers.

“I want you,” she sighs into his mouth when he takes a moment to breathe, his lips ghosting faintly over her own, not quite able to bring himself to move too far from her. “I want your hands on me, I want you, I think about fucking you all the fucking time.”

Hearing his lady speak like this is the sort of thing Blackwall had never once thought about, and it certainly warms him more than he might have expected. He _likes_ it while she’s squirming on top of him, fumbling to free him from his trousers and freely rocking her hips toward his, content moans echoing shamelessly across the cold night. He likes the stream of filthy words she’s murmuring into his ear just as much.

Cadash squeezes him firmly at the base of his cock, stroking upward with a sort of practiced grace that overwhelms. He doesn’t recognize the strangled groan as his own until he realizes that her hips are still and her attention is on him. 

“You won’t be able to tell me what you want,” Her eyes float up to his, the faintest smile on her plush mouth and her fingers curled around the swollen head. They kiss again, and Cadash leaves a stinging bite on his lower lip when they break: “You can’t even speak, can you?” 

“Not well,” Blackwall stammers out through a laugh that chokes off when she slips from his lap and lowers herself to the ground at his feet. He doesn’t ask what she’s doing, he doesn’t need to wonder, because Cadash pushes his knees apart and looks up at him with the same open desire he’d seen in her eyes before she left the tavern.

Her hand moves quickly then, stroking his aching hardness until his eyes fall closed and as much as he’d like to form a coherent thought, even the faintest protest to keep this from going too far, this is already a foregone cause for them—for _him._

“Look at me.” Cadash whispers the command and she waits for his eyes to fly open and meet hers before she actually smiles. Those lips, full and warm and dusty pink, close around the the tip of his cock and the noise he makes just then is barely human.

Blackwall isn’t breathing anymore. It’s enough effort for him to obey her, to keep his eyes open and watching when she dips her head forward and swallows more of his cock than he’d thought possible and _when_ had he been thinking about her like this when he’d been so careful to think of her as nothing more than his lady Herald? 

He slumps back against the wall weakly, silently rationalizing and counter-rationalizing everything he wants. His shaking hand cups her cheek, and he tries to keep from thrusting up into her mouth. Her hair is softer than he’d expected it to be, cut so close to her scalp, and the warm tones of her skin seem to glow in the faint light from the forge fires. He traces the scar across her eye with the pad of his thumb and knows this is all going to be far worse than Blackwall ever imagined it could be. Cadash is devastatingly beautiful, and it will ruin him and everything he’s worked to become.

Just when he thinks he has enough control of himself to focus on her—her lips pulled taut around his cock, her tongue slick and soft on the underside—her gaze flies up toward his and she swallows his length in one smooth motion. He can’t hear her moan when the tip bumps the back of her throat, but he feels it straight down in the root of his cock and his eyes start to fall closed again.

 _Look at me,_ Cadash commanded him before, and Blackwall thinks of that now, forcing himself to keep his eyes on hers, on her eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks when she bobs her head back, twisting her hand around with a firm grip. 

“Cadash,” Blackwall growls the warning desperately, feels her affirming answer, and it’s enough, it’s finally enough. His howling conscience goes blissfully silent as familiar heat and lightness spreads faster than his racing heartbeat. Cadash seals her lips around his cock and her eyes, the gold-green of the end of summer’s idyll, watch his when he jerks up into her mouth and releases. 

Blackwall doesn’t know how long it is before he comes to his senses again, but Cadash is sitting back on her heels with a satisfied expression, wiping the side of her smiling mouth.

“Maker, I knew you were trouble,” he manages with a laugh, because the lingering warmth in his blood has made him feel recklessly, undeservedly happy, even as it seeps away faster than he can stop it.

Her hands are less urgent but gentler as Cadash tucks his softened cock into his trousers and rises to her feet. He wants to reach for her, knows that she’ll be left wanting if he doesn’t, but she brushes his hand aside when he touches her hip with intent. 

“Next time,” she says dismissively. “I was curious if you would come.” Cadash steps between his thighs and smoothing a piece of his mussed hair from his face with unmasked affection. 

He’s just beginning to feel the tide rising in his chest, the sense that he’s finally lost against himself when she tugs gently on his beard and kisses him. Her mouth tastes strongly, enticingly of him. 

“I’d been trying to get your attention for weeks now,” she laughs, a low sound that pierces his chest. “I thought, if you didn’t come now, I’d leave well enough alone.”

And there it is, Blackwall thinks with dread, feeling faint for reasons unrelated to his lingering afterglow. He’d been tested, had almost cleared this temptation she innocently presented him, only to find that he’d come up wanting again. 

“You’d best get back to your quarters, Lady Cadash,” he says thickly, feeling as if he’s watching this all happen from a mile off. “Or they’ll be wondering where you’ve gone.”

“We’ve got an early morning, too,” Cadash admits, smiling openly at him when she offers him a hand up. “Good night, Blackwall.” 

He doesn’t remember what he says, if he bids her a good night or if he bothers saying anything at all. Either way, Cadash doesn’t look back at him when he watches her go. She doesn’t seem to even question for a moment her certainty in what she’s started.

If only, Blackwall finds him wishing, standing stark still in the cold long after she’s disappeared through the gate. If only he’d had enough restraint, or if only she could have chosen anyone else but him, or if only he could have been anyone but himself for her.

If only.


End file.
